In the End, Justice

This meme got me thinking: Is this really what kids are learning?  A few points:

It doesn’t apply to young kids growing up in the homes of Trump supporters, since they’re told that the president is an honest hero, working hard for the interests of the American people, and if they come across any idea that conflicts with this, it’s necessarily Fake News. This, FWIW, is the way all cults operate; their leaders are billed as perfect and their beliefs are the only valid ones, though all this is misunderstood by society at large.

As these children get older, they have the opportunity to figure this out for themselves, but an opportunity is not a guarantee of anything.  I recall some of the racists in my high school class in the early 1970s, and I have to admit the sad truth: many of them are racists today. 

Nor does this apply to kids growing up in progressive homes either, at least in the presence of strong and committed parents who explain that the president is, in fact, a liar, a bully, an abuser of women, a criminal, etc., and still managed to become the most powerful person on Earth.  What this shows is not that pathological lying and crime are good ways of life, but that good things happen to bad people, if only for a short period of time.  That’s a harsh lesson, but it’s generally true; life sometimes isn’t fair for disturbingly long periods of time, even if what MLK said was right, i.e., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

But what’s going to happen soon, starting at noon on January 20, 2021 when Trump leaves office?  The U.S. (and perhaps international) justice system is going to come raining down on him like the biblical floods did in the days of Noah.  Whether he stands trial or escapes to Russia remains to be seen, but he’ll be convicted of a wealth of crimes, and sentenced, perhaps in absentia, to decades, or more probably hundreds of years in prison.

At that point, American parents will be able to tell their kids, “You just witnessed the greatest crime spree in the history of humankind.  You saw one of the world’s most horrible people rise to power and attempt to become an absolute ruler, like they have in Russia, China, North Korea, and the like. But then what happened?  Justice prevailed, as it tends to do in the end.”